


Saturdays at Cafe L'Amour

by ShirayukiEru



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Love, Love Triangles, POV Third Person Limited, Reader-Insert, Romance, Short Chapters, Shorts, Slow Burn, fem!reader - Freeform, idk about that slow burn tag but yolo, reader has a main personality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-03-18 08:11:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3562532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShirayukiEru/pseuds/ShirayukiEru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the sixth day of every week, gazes belonging to two gentle souls would always meet in their tranquil haven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. aprιl 18тн

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted in my Wattpad account. Will have pretty slow updates since this isn't exactly a priority fic and college (enough said).

_“I’m okay. Don’t worry about me. Have fun!”_ she quickly typed into her phone and pressed the send button with a trembling thumb, gigantic tears rolling down her cheeks. As she placed the phone into the secure pocket of her messenger bag, she pursed her quivering lips and forced herself to steady her breathing, all in a futile effort to keep herself from letting out the slightest sob in the public area, containing five people at most, she was currently in.

Her blurry tear-filled eyes giving the laptop screen in front of her one last heart-wrenching glance, all her hopeful thoughts were shattered into shards by the finality of the heavy words held by the email she received that day. She could still feel the sharpness of the remaining fragments of her ambitious thinking painfully piercing her chest.

Her dreams’ death by rejection has unexpectedly felt so devastatingly tragic, along with the freezing harsh reality dousing her empty being.

An uncontrollable sniffle left her system, followed by a series of quick but silent sobs she could no longer restrain. She buried her pitiful crying face into her hands, the ends of her fingers pressing and rubbing her closed eyes, merely smearing the wetness on her eyes’ area. All her self-restraint was drowned by the dejection in her chest that was quickly spreading out through her entire body.

“Customer-san, your order’s here.”

She nearly jumped away from the flat courteous voice, carelessly forgetting about her current predicament for a moment as her eyes met those ocean-like ones of a taller male with a naturally pale complexion and hair which reminded her of the serene sky. She immediately turned away, her cheeks growing warm due to embarrassment, and bowed down to let her tresses hide her tear-ridden face. How long had he been there? She never heard the slightest sound of footsteps coming her way nor did she sense someone else’s presence in her two-meter radius!

Really, coffee picked the right time to get to her. Note the sarcasm.

“Thank you,” she answered under her breath as her fingers fidgeted on her lap and her shoulder rose and fell with each involuntary whimper, still minding unnecessary courteousness. All she wanted was to melt in the spot for having important details, such as crying, being in a public place, and ordering something she should’ve expected to arrive shortly, to carelessly slip out of her mind.

The waiter remained on his place after he set the cup of hot coffee and other necessary items on her table, his inexpressive stare still on her downcast figure. “Is there anything else I could help you with?” he asked politely, his monotonous voice almost sounding sympathetic.

Violently shaking her head as if to drive him away, she still answered firmly and almost bitterly, “No, I’m fine.” As her voice’s wavering near the end begged to differ, she raised her hand and waved him away. “Thank you.”

The presence-less male hummed a short low-pitched note and soon turned away after a few seconds with an audible and respect-filled “I understand”, most probably sensing her current desire to be left alone.

A few minutes were all it took for her to calm down, but not to stop dwelling in what seemed to be an abyss of anguish. Heck, she doubted that she’d even be strong enough to move on in a week; she poured so much effort on her work that it looked impossible.  _The coffee will get cold,_  she reminded herself as she wiped the afternoon’s last tears away with her bare hands. Her gaze falling on the table’s area where the server placed the articles she ordered, curiosity immediately made way in her. They were what one would find typical in a typical café, but something was different.

There was an uncharacteristically large number of tissues stacked together just beside the coffee’s saucer, with something written in blue on the top tissue. Before she knew it, her hand was already holding on to the tissues and was in front of her to get a better view of the words.

 _“Tomorrow is another day,_ ” it said. Though, at first glance, it looked as if it was typed then printed, she knew it was handwritten by the way the letters were inscribed and the way they gave the soft surface a different texture. Her eyebrows rose as she held on the top tissue and placed the rest on her laptop’s keyboard, only to reveal another tissue with something else written on it.

_“Fall seven times, rise eight.”_

She took it, revealing another tissue with a quote.

_“We know what we are, but not know what we may be.”_

Another.

_“The pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow.”_

And another.

_“Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”_

And a lot more.

Half of the stack had something written in them while the other half was completely blank—probably the ones given to actually dry her tears.

Most of the phrases and sentences were already familiar to her, while the others she had never read conveyed the same message in general. But just the thought that a random stranger wrote everything for someone he also didn’t know lifted a large part of the heavy sensation in her chest, and that brought a small unconscious smile to her lips as she skimmed through the soft thin papers in her hand.

Her earlier thoughts of not being good enough, of just letting go of what she had always wanted to do, and of surrendering to what she believed to be her fate started to evaporate from her mind, replaced by the words held by the tissue papers.

Maybe, just maybe, she wouldn’t give up after all. That would put the tissues’ giver’s effort to waste, right?

As she gave the person in charge with the cash register and the phantom-like male, who were both idly standing by the counter, a quick look, she finally confirmed that it was indeed the waiter who wrote the quotes. The good-looking male at the cashier busily talking to the waiter had his hair set up in a style that obviously took a long period of time to accomplish, had pierces on his earlobe, and had a slightly disheveled collar—basically showing his high regard for appearances which meant that he either wanted to give the attractive bad boy impression to the opposite gender or was simply metrosexual. Since, for her, the former was more likely, he would’ve been the type to come to her table instead of writing on tissues. Also, the waiter had a blue pen on his top’s pocket and a pocketbook, a likely source of his words, in his blue waist apron (she could tell by the way it made a mark on the pocket and its familiar size).

The bluenet’s head turned ever so slightly in her direction, instantly meeting her eyes. She immediately broke the gaze they shared, her cheeks growing warm out of sudden consciousness.

 _Next week_ , she promised to herself as she brought the cup of coffee to her lips and took a cautious sip,  _I’ll talk to him next week._


	2. April 25th

“Excuse me, miss. Your order’s here.”

Her gaze promptly left the uninteresting scientific words of the thick book on top of her circular wooden table, the same table from last week, then went to the unreadable face of the sky blue haired waiter standing still just beside her. She found herself staring into those expressionless eyes for a moment too long, and only realized it when he blinked once then twice a second later. Heat rushed to her cheeks as she immediately averted her eyes from those unreadable ones and took the book off of her table and into her messenger bag to give him some space to place her coffee and cake.

Last week, she did tell herself to talk to him, but the words she needed to say to convey her thoughts and gratitude never really crossed her mind.

She held her breath as he steadily placed her cup of latte macchiato at the center of the table with the soft yet oddly pleasant clatter of the ceramic cup and its small plate. Running out of time to think of something to say which would not be too friendly or too awkward, her eyes followed his fair-skinned fingers noiselessly setting down the slice of cake just beside the coffee as her mind frantically raced through different phrases and conversation starters she’s heard and read. None of them came as appropriate as she wanted it to be. Her writer self scolded her current self for her inexcusable predicament. 

It wasn't like she could just talk to him about last week's incident; he was still a stranger who could be uncomfortable with people talking to him out of the blue, even if that didn't make sense as he's also a waiter.

The metallic fork was already placed on a few sheets of tissues when he straightened up his stance, his circular plastic tray in his left hand's grasp. She immediately sat straight, her mind as blank as his expression.  _Ah, screw it,_ she thought as a deep breath left her chest, her eyes failing to look at him even with her wavering conviction. "Um..."

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" he asked, his tone as flat and polite as always. She stiffened—she knew he sensed her evident unease—until, through his generic question, she finally found the words she was to use. She squinted discretely to read the characters embedded on his plastic nameplate before she looked at him straight in the eye in hopes that it would give him a hint that what she was to say held more meaning than it usually did. 

"Thank you very much, Kuroko-san. I really appreciate it."


	3. May 2nd

A dictionary's definition of a four-letter word has never been so vague despite the large amount of space it occupied in the page.

Her hands flew to her temples then pressed circles on it, her face scrunching up in frustration. As her gaze flickered back and forth from the same two-week old email, which almost made her drop her dreams of becoming a great authoress if not for the tissue paper notes she received from a certain stranger, to the small handy dictionary laid on top of her legs, her conviction of providing a remedy to her shortcomings wavered.

" _Your concept is interesting,_ " said the email, " _but it lacked the most essential part: the feeling of romantic love. If this aspect could be improved, you aremore than welcome to submit the updated manuscript._ "

But what exactly is love? How does one fall in love? Realize it? Remain in it? Nurture it? Fall out of it?

A sigh leaving her lips, she took her phone out of an hourly habit, where a message was waiting to be read. It turned out, much to her slight excitement, that it was her friend who claimed to be in love with the same person since middle school. She asked the same query that was perturbing her thoughts for a week now even when she had something more important to take care of. Take writing that essay due next week for example.

_"Well, love is that fluttery feeling you get when you're with him! Or when you just see his really handsome face! (๑•́ ω •̀๑) It's like your heart going ba-thump ba-thump really quickly with even just the thought of him! It's actually really a fluffy and fuzzy feeling that's really nice~ Why did you ask? Are you in love? ♥(✿ฺ´∀'✿ฺ)ﾉ"_

The reply made one of her eyebrows arch and her lips curl into a small incredulous smile. In all honesty, it wasn't really helpful. Though she did revel in the idea of her pretty friend lovingly holding hands with the kind male she spoke so highly of with their hearts 'going ba-thump ba-thump really quickly' the whole time, she still could not comprehend the whole concept. It was actually a basic technique in the novels she had read where the protagonist's heart would skip beats when they get into a scene with their love interest. She just wanted to do something different and less obvious, something less cliche.

As she was in the middle of composing her response, a terrified shriek broke the peaceful atmosphere enraptured by the cafe's customers. She looked up out of sheer curiosity, and found a grown man cowering in front of the person in charge of the counter at the moment, the silent and unreadable Kuroko. He simply blinked then nodded apologetically.

"I apologize for startling you, sir, but I've been here all this time."

"H-HAH?!" The man stepped back, his wide eyes almost falling out of their sockets. He scanned the room and realized that he was making a scene, so he straightened up and cleared his throat. "Er... I'll have an espresso..." 

The scene made her laugh silently, relieving her of her love stress. As she covered her lips and tried to stifle her guffaw and amusement, a pair of cerulean eyes met hers, which made her stop in surprise. Was she too loud that he heard her even from afar? The next second, she swore she was dreaming.

For the shortest of moments, an almost unnoticeable smile tugged at his lips before he, with the usual look of indifference, turned back to the flustered customer.


	4. мay 9тн

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notifications from this fic are my only reminders to update this tbh  
> //slapped.

"One cookies and cream frappe and one strawberry crepe. Is that all?"

She stared at him unblinkingly for a few seconds, searching his face for the littlest piece of thought and emotion. His serene blue eyes were just as expressionless as his face, deadpanned and uncharacteristically dull for a person working at the counter. His gestures and body movements were just as neutral, devoid of anything more other than what was necessary at the moment.

"Yes, thank you," she finally replied, tearing her stare away from him in temporary defeat and fishing her purse adorned by pink frills and intricate laces from her mismatching old denim messenger bag.

"That'll be 1080 yen."

She handed him the exact amount. He handed her the receipt. She walked away and went to her usual table.

Once she got settled on her seat, she put out her small notebook and flipped it open to a blank page. Taking her trusty black pen from her sweater's pocket, she started scribbling what she found interesting on her way thirty-six minutes ago, the image of the burly male feeding pigeons in the park still clear in her mind. When she was done, she let her gaze roam the cafe's indoor scene and focus on the other  three customers.

The bespectacled male who sat three tables away from her, for example, definitely had a date scheduled today. He had his palms pressed against each other as he rested the frontal part of his face on it, his eyes tightly shut and his breathing obviously ragged. He wore a gray blazer over his black and white striped shirt. The bottom part of his outfit consisted of dark fitting pants and high cut polished boots of the same hue. Around his neck loosely hung a plaid peanut-colored scarf, and on his wrist was a silver expensive-looking watch. That was not an outfit you'd wear if you were just out to get some coffee.

Also, the articles on the male's table were a forgotten cup of coffee meant to be drank in a few minutes, a white inactive smartphone being glanced at by him every five seconds, and a tin can of amaranth pink with a ribbon of a darker shade on top of it.

She wrote down her observations because, well, she believed that reality is always the best reference for any kind of fiction. Perhaps the male's current uncomfortable situation could help her write the forsaken genre she was now forced to write about. Just as she was through the first six important points, the door's melodious bell chime resounded in the cafe, immediately followed by the sound of one of the wooden chairs being pushed back. Entering the cafe and looking at the male was a girl with fluffy hazel brown hair and a flowy white dress accessorized by a heart charm necklace. The graceful female walked to the jittery man and sat in front of him.

She grinned to herself; she was right about her guess.

She looked back down to her pocket-sized notebook in with a small satisfied smile and spun her pen in complete circles through her fingers. She closed her eyes momentarily, and tried not to remember what she last saw before her vision turned dark, then opened them to see a woman, presumably in her mid-thirties, busily hunched over a stack of legal-sized papers with a large cup of espresso beside it. Shrugging, she began to take notes regarding her new target once again and began being thoroughly occupied by her thoughts.

The third person for her to lay her eyes on was interesting—too interesting, to be exact, that she had to spend a longer period of time to figure out something definite about him. He was the incarnation of contrasting elements and of unrelated circumstances. Who in the right mind would wear expensive fashionable clothes yet bring a totally worn-out bag? He seemed the type to be a show-off—and no, she couldn't tell if he was gay or not, which was another problem—so why would he use something that would put his efforts to shame? It didn't look like it belonged to someone else. Also, he was using a laptop of the latest models and yet there was a device connected to it that was made to be able to read diskettes, which is a really old-fashioned type of memory storage item. That didn't even make any sense—

"I apologize for the long wait."

Her body automatically straightened up upon hearing the calm and soothing voice which shooed away the noise of her inner rants and seemed to further tone down the mellow music playing in the café. She snatched her pen and notebook from her table in a swift motion and let them rest on her lap; she didn't want anyone to get the impression that she was stalking anyone, especially not the waiter who gave her the tissue notes. She curled her lips into a sheepish smile as she let her hands fall to her sides, as if to say that he was now welcome to place her food on the table.

He did as she expected him to, and now, unlike what she always did before, she paid closer attention to his movements. Just as he was unnoticeable, there was nothing extraordinary with his movements. He carefully brought the cup of coffee and the plate of crepe and set them down, his index finger first being sandwiched by the plate and the table's surface to avoid making less noise. But that wasn't really anything interesting; she had noticed waiters and waitresses do just that.

He brought back his hand to his sides, the black circular tray in between his arm and the side of his torso. "Is there anything else?" he asked in a formal and steady tone, one that was deemed proper for their situation.

She slumped down a little—the smallest indication of her disappointment. Her eyes remained on his serene ocean-like ones, and again, she couldn't get anything. A small sigh of defeat left her lips before her lips were forced into a small, friendly smile. "No, there's nothing," she replied, and an idea came up. "Thank you, Kuroko-san," she added, giving emphasis on his name and intending to elicit a reaction from him.

He blinked, unfazed, and made a curt bow before walking away.

That was it. That was the end of their interaction for the week.

Her gaze remained on his trail nonetheless, as he walked back to the counter only to be tackled by his slightly older co-worker. The taller male cheerfully said something, and Kuroko's lips quirked up to a small smile. He casually scratched his cheek and said something in reply.

_Huh._

Maybe that was enough for today.

She felt herself beam in satisfaction before turning to her food and bringing the fork to the crepe.


	5. мay 16тн

_Five_ _times_ _,_ she thought as she set down her bag on top of the wooden circular table, her usual spot. It had been the fifth Saturday ever since she started coming to the almost isolated place, with the first being an eventful experience.

Recalling what happened that time, her eyes wandered to the counter then around the cafe's pleasant interior and saw no sign of the light-haired male, which planted a tiny seed of disappointment in her chest. She was expecting him, she realized. He wasn't there when she ordered for a frappe and a cheesecake, and she was instead entertained by a good-looking male who seemed to be in his early twenties, the same person from the first day.

She was at least thirty minutes early, though, but it still fell into the period of time she'd like to refer to as the lazy hours--it was technically afternoon but not exactly afternoon. People's idea of afternoon, she assumed, was that pleasantly temperate time of the day when the sun's starting to paint the sky's blue canvas in deep crimson and tangerine hues with dashes of purple and pink. The afternoon she was referring to, however, was literally after noon, when people would feel extremely drowsy--in her personal experience, that is. It would also be the time when the sun's heat would be at its peak, making people prefer to stay indoors instead. And, apparently, her long break after her Saturday morning class and before her (cooler) afternoon class fell in those lazy hours.

Her gaze fell on her slightly open bag revealing a small part of her shiny laptop of a pleasant pastel hue as her head rested on the palm of her open hand, her lips narrowing into a thin line. No, she still wasn't ready to give the writing thing another go. Just reading the first word of her rejected manuscript would fill her up with a bitter feeling, since all that time she thought she was good enough. She overestimated her capabilities, and this was where it got her.

Giving up on planning to do something productive during her free time, she turned to the glass walls in front of the cafe and was welcomed with the peaceful view of the trees dancing with the wind and the shades they casted following their movements, the small breaks of sunlight appearing and disappearing. Through the greenery beside the narrow road, a few students from the same university could be seen loitering around. Among those was a couple, and she was reminded of her now three-week-long dilemma. She released a sigh and was about to turn back to her table when a streak of light blue from outside caught her attention, her heart rate increasing considerably.

Her immediate guess was right; it was  _him_. 

Wearing a university's white and indigo long-sleeved jacket and jogging pants, he was walking at a quick pace towards the cafe with his dark sports bag slinging carelessly on his shoulder. For once, she could see the tiniest pint of exhaustion gracing his usual inexpressive features, the beads of sweat forming on his forehead and rolling down his cheeks serving as further proof. He was late for his shift.

Interest and satisfaction bubbled within her, her eyes trailing his sweaty figure as it rushed towards what she thought to be the café's employee's back entrance since he gave the current cashier an acknowledging nod. With just a few seconds, she was able to make likely assumptions regarding the ghost-like male: one, he's also a student her age at the same university; two, he's a member of one of the university's prominent sports clubs; and three, he's a part-timer. Of course, all of these could be wrong, but they're what she wanted to believe in at the moment.

But then, she suddenly asked herself: why did she care so much?


	6. мay 23rd

In the span of those few hours every week she entered and stayed in the café, she somehow started to feel a sense of belonging and comfort. She liked the atmosphere and the aroma of brewing coffee—it wasn't too strong nor was it too faint, it was just enough to set the ambiance. It was her resting place in between her Saturday social studies and her physics classes.

Sometimes, she wondered why not a lot of people went there, but then she'd be reminded that she prefers less crowded places so the lack of customers during the time she visits worked in her stead.

But right now, it didn't.

One of the things she especially liked staying in the café was her table; she considered it that way since no one really sits on her regular seat whenever she went to the café. Her seat enabled her to get a good view of the café's interior, the other people in it, and the counter. She also grew fond of the comfortable seat and the table that was clearly only fit for one person and that didn't make her seem like a loner or a poor girl who was stood up by her date.

A café with not a lot of customers meant that there were more places to sit, and a businessman just had to take her table.

Her relaxed facial features formed a slight scowl the moment she entered and realized that her table wasn't free today. That meant that she had to trash her 'data gathering' plan for today, and instead continue reading the romance novel she was getting tired of. It was said to be that it was one of the most romantic young adult novels of her time, but all she could see was an inexpressive teenage girl in love with a sparkling vampire only because of his good looks and his power. Heck, the most intimate thing they did was to stare at each other. To think that she was somehow hyped to read it due to the fact that the vampire protagonist is a supernatural being...

She released a glum sigh, as if letting out a small gray storm cloud could brighten up her inner dark, gloomy sky one bit.

The moment her gaze landed on the presence-lacking male fumbling with the espresso machine behind the blonde pierced male manning the cashier, a large grumpy cloud took a temporary leave. She ran her fingers through her wavy hair in a subtle effort to fix whatever mess the hyper spring winds did to her tresses, and stopped midway. What was she getting all conscious for, anyway? It wasn't like he—wait, no—they cared with what their customer looked like or anything.

The bluenet turned and their eyes met; she suddenly started to worry once again if she looked haggard or not. Her fingers weaved through her bangs and pushed away the strands that got in front of her face, and, again, she scolded herself for being so uneasy and unnatural.

"Yes?" the male in the cashier inquired, immediately making her break her gaze with the boy with the hair of the clear summer sky. He fondly smiled at her, like she was someone he knew for years. It was amazingly contagious that she found herself smiling back, even if her somewhat lame excuse of a smile was more like a slight stretch of the lips.

She scanned the menu above the waiter's and the cashier's heads, and she replied in a tone she tried her best to modulate, "Strawberry frappe and apple crepe, please." She winced at how her voice was higher-pitched than it usually was, and she discreetly eyed the waiter, who watched their exchange for a few seconds, blinked, then turned back to his work.

Still grinning like he found something extremely amusing (hopefully, it wasn't her), the male—Nishino, she read from his nameplate—pressed a few buttons on the cash register and the amount appeared on the small screen on top of it. "That'll be 1040 yen!" he stated cheerily, flashing his shiny white teeth in an open-mouthed grin.

She handed him the amount, somehow entranced by his sparkly smile. She wouldn't be surprised if there's a period of time every day when there would be hoards of girls coming into the café just to experience Nishino's (fan) service.

Tilting his head a bit, he gave her the change and the receipt followed by a "Thank you!" that sounded more like a cheerful song. She smiled—or stretched her lips, whatever—at him one last time before turning away and back into her little seating dilemma.

Her seemingly unimportant predicament was soon solved when she found a table for two at the opposite side of the café, though the view of the outdoors and the counter were not as great and blocked by and thriving indoor plant. From her place, all she could see from that certain waiter was his head—Wait, what?

Head shaking violently, she threw the image of Kuroko's head away from her mind, into her figurative abyss of oblivion. Something was wrong with her lately, and it greatly involved him. Filling her mind with thoughts of going through the chore of finishing reading her so-called romance reference, she grabbed the pocket novel from her bag and flipped open to the page where her intricately-designed metallic bookmark was in.

Something, however, felt unsettling; it felt like she was in a foreign area despite being in the same café. She looked back to the man who sat comfortably in her seat. Eyes narrowing, she inwardly willed him to stand up and leave, but nothing happened after half a minute of her imaginary telekinesis. Once again, a sigh leaving her lips, she turned back helplessly to her copy and continued reading.


End file.
